


gracious goes the ghost

by adreamaloud, daneorange (adreamaloud)



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 02:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/adreamaloud, https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/daneorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when Alison looks in the mirror, all she sees is Beth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gracious goes the ghost

**Author's Note:**

> And she said, Don't we all fall in love with semblances? Title is from Ben Howard's "Gracious."

* the prompts are from [here](http://realtimelord.tumblr.com/post/52635972546/there-might-be-a-few-ships-in-the-orphan-black) and [here](http://thegeekmonkey.tumblr.com/post/52333129331/i-bet-alison-stares-into-the-mirror-all-the-time). thank you :)

_And I will never forget the plans and the  
_ _Silhouettes you drew here (ben howard, gracious)_

* 

Sometimes, when Alison looks at the mirror all she sees is Beth: Careful and measured Beth, Beth who almost never smiled.

Beth, who took everything too seriously (funny, how Alison had never really imagined finding someone else who took things more seriously, and funnier still, when this person turned out to be someone who is  _essentially_ her. After all this time, it still blows Alison’s mind—)

Beth, who was the first to bring her to a gun.

All too often, Alison finds herself waking in a panic in the middle of the night, and the only thing that calms her is the cold steel of it in her hands. When she closes her eyes, she still sees it clearly in her head: Beth walking to her at the firing range and holding the revolver out, the uneasy smile on her face.  _Just in case_ , she’d said, and Alison remembers all too vividly, how  _heavy_ the small thing once felt; how Beth had to hold her hands up, once.

Looking at the mirror tonight, Alison almost hears Beth whispering in her ear:  _Steady, now._ She’s leaning over her dresser with the drawer open and the gun inside, a shaky hand stroking the barrel.

Between that day Beth jumped in front of the train and today — when Alison closes her eyes, trying to remember a time when she felt a semblance of control over  _anything,_ all she sees is Beth smiling at her after that first time she fires the gun. She was shaking so hard she nearly drops to her knees, had Beth not run over to catch her.

It was the first time Alison ever heard her laugh. That time, Beth had said,  _Now, for the hard part._

_The hard part is you,_ Alison thinks, studying her eyes on the mirror. Since finding out, she’s had some difficulty reconciling how  _this face_ is just one of many. She reaches out and touches the surface, tracing the outlines of  _their_  face, the mirror cold under her fingertips.

( _Here_ , Alison thinks, lowering her finger along the edge of her reflection’s neck, right behind the ear.  _Here was a scar._ )

There was never just one story for it, or perhaps Alison just remembers them all, Beth’s ridiculous versions included.  _Burned myself with a curling iron,_ was how one went.  _Right where the doctors hit me first, just to check if I was alive,_ went another version.

Beth never really smiled, so Alison could never really tell when Beth was joking; besides, Alison’s default setting had been to  _trust_ her.

_I trusted you not to leave,_ Alison tells the Beth in the mirror — the one who’s actually her reflection. For a moment Alison is startled to see her lips actually moving, thinking it was _Beth_ who had actually talked back _. F-this, I am losing my mind._

Alison blinks repeatedly, her vision blurring then clearing.  _Hang on, Hendrix,_ she tells herself with her eyes closed — perhaps the only time she feels like she is truly alone and _herself_ , and not anyone else.

*

It comes mostly when she isn’t ready for it — not that Alison has ever been ready for it, to begin with, but no matter — this time, Alison remembers just as Donnie throws his side of the covers aside to join her in bed, and right on cue, Alison excuses herself to move into the bathroom.

This time, when Alison looks in the mirror, she sees a dash of Cosima there — Cosima, who was mostly at fault for  _that_ time. Alison shivers at the memory of it, and blames Cosima some more, her eyes shut now:  _You said we could — I_ could  _— forget all about this._

_In time._

Of course, she hasn’t. Truth is, Alison still remembers every single detail like it were yesterday: From the moment Cosima rolled that first joint, to that moment Beth pulled away from the kiss.

_Jesus Christ, Beth._ When Alison opens her eyes again, it’s Beth she sees: That tell-tale blush on her face, her half-parted lips; the sound of her nervous laugh. “Come on,”she remembers Beth saying, clearing her throat as she tries to salvage the situation. “Tell me you haven’t once considered.”

“Considered?”Alison had asked, touching her lip out of reflex. It felt too tender, the way it never had with all the other kisses before, and it left her wondering why this was different. “Jesus, Beth. Is it — is this  _incest_? Only we’re not related, but still.”

She remembers how Beth had laughed; how she’d touched Alison’s hand, awkward and gentle. “Only you’re essentially me, and I’m essentially you, I’m afraid.”

“I’m afraid we’re a bit self-absorbed,” was what Alison just said. For a moment there, they teetered on the edge of laughter, but only until Cosima walked back into the room, a freshly lit joint between her fingers. Just like that, it was done, and the moment was gone.

*

Between that first time and the day Beth jumped in front of the train, they kissed again only twice, and the one time Alison initiated it, they were in the garage fixing Alison’s car.  Alison had called in the middle of another panic attack — soccer practice was in  _two hours_ , and there she was, still stuck in her garage with her engine out.

“Come quickly,” was how she put it on the phone, and Alison held her breath as she watched Beth rolling slowly to a stop right in front of their driveway _. Look who’s eff’d_ , she tells herself as she opened the garage door.

Looking back, Alison really believes she couldn’t fault herself for that time — Beth had been all business, popping the hood without hesitating and just,  _Jesus._ Alison had to bite down on her tongue to keep herself from doing  _anything,_ but then again, when Beth stripped down to her black tank top — “Wouldn’t want to get grease on my blouse, jeez,” she’d said, off-handedly  — there was little Alison could do not to walk over.

The first place Alison touched was Beth’s arm — solid and toned, and Alison  _knows_ when a body has been doing good things; she could tell as much when she held on tighter and pulled Beth in. There’s a small sound of surprise as Beth fell into Alison, but it’s gone the minute Beth decided to start kissing back.

_Tell me you haven’t once considered—_

The moment lasted longer than expected, and that time it was Alison who pushed herself away. “No,” she found herself saying, “This isn’t—”

Beth looked away, shoving her hands in her back pockets. The movement hiked the front of her top a little, and when Alison peeked, she saw that the gun holster around Beth’s hip was empty.  _Two armed girls with their weapons down,_ Alison just thought, chewing on her lip.

“Yeah,” Beth said. “Probably.”

That afternoon, Alison was an hour late for soccer practice. It was the last she would hear from Beth in a long while.

*

Alison doesn’t really think about the last time she saw Beth – too difficult, and besides, there hasn’t exactly been a quiet moment since Sarah blew into town.

_Sarah._ Alison knows it isn’t her fault that she  _isn’t_  Beth, but then these days it just keeps getting  _harder_  and all Alison wants, really, is to keep any semblance of control over _anything._

Of course, the first thing she does is hate her. As Cosima had so carefully supplied:  _It’s displacement, Alison. It’s how some people grieve._ That time, Alison only shrugged her off, wondering whether she’s actually all alone in this  _sadness_  – if this is just all data to Cosima and her  _science._ Many times, she almost says it aloud, but none of the words make it out. To a degree, it pleases her.  _Control,_ she just reminds herself, biting down upon the tip of her tongue.

On the night it catches up with her, she’s alone in the house post-workout and Donnie’s out on a run. She’s hunched over the sink, washing the sweat off her face and when she looks back up at the mirror she sees Beth again: Face flushed and chest heaving, and _that’s_ when it hits her like a hard slap across the face.

It had been a night like this too, when Beth asked her out on a night run; a night like this too, when Beth showed up on Alison’s door in her hoodie and sweat pants, smelling faintly of rum.

Alison remembers asking, “I thought you wanted to run?” And then, off Beth’s lopsided smile: “Are you alright?” Alison had known then that something was off; the fact was, it had already been nagging at her for a relatively long time, and it wasn’t even just the kiss.

“Oh,  _Beth_ ,” Alison whispers, wiping her face with a towel and touching her reflection gently. “I should have known.”

That night, they found themselves in the laundry room, drinking leftover wine from Alison’s last party. Alison doesn’t remember much – there had been a mistake and a gun and before she even knew it, Beth’s saying goodbye and reaching for her from across the table and.

Alison’s head was far too heavy for  _control,_ and that was how the second kiss happened: drunk and careless and sloppy, with Alison pressed upon the table’s edge painfully, her hands slipping upon the surface.

It was Beth who ended the kiss, pulling back sharply and saying, “I got to go,” against Alison’s lips before making her way toward the door. She’d paused upon getting there; with a hand already on the knob, she turned around at the last minute, pulling out her gun from inside her jacket and placing it carefully upon a nearby table before going out without another word.

*

Alison still has  _Beth’s_  gun, tucked away in a secret compartment inside this house. Somehow, she feels safer, like Beth were around to wield it.

_Tell me you haven’t once considered—_

_Once,_  she just thinks, staring at herself in the mirror, where she is both herself and Beth at the same time.  _And maybe never again._ #


End file.
